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You can accept or turn away

There's only one avenue through that, and that's self-will. You can accept or turn away, and that's the only avenue to that. If you accept the will of God through that spirit, God's Spirit takes His place in your heart and controls the rest of you. And if you do not accept That, then the enemy takes that spot and controls the rest of you.

Romans 8:14

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

Now, a man is made up as a triune being: soul, body, spirit. Now, the outside is the body. There is five gates to that body, and that's the five senses, of course: see, taste, feel, smell, and hear. The inside, like the seed that's planted, the inside of that is the pulp-like of the seed, which is the soul. There is five gates to that, you enter into: conscience, and memory, and so forth. But then inside of that little compartment is the third compartment, which is the spirit. And that's what controls the rest of it. There's only one avenue through that, and that's self will. You can accept or turn away, and that's the only avenue to that. If you accept the will of God through that spirit, God's Spirit takes His place in your heart and controls the rest of you. And if you do not accept That, then the enemy takes that spot and controls the rest of you. So it lays in that. And man, being made up in that fashion, then it gives him the—the something inside of him that makes him want to achieve something by himself. He is trying to do something to save himself. He wants to get out of it, but he wants to do it himself. He wants to make his own way about it. Now, he’s tried many achievements. He’s tried to achieve this through science. And every time that he moves through science, he only destroys himself. Every time that science makes something, he destroys himself; gunpowder, and atomic energy, and—and nuclear weapons, and automobiles, and all these things. Yet, temporarily it helps him, but in the long run it destroys himself. Because he’s…It’s something that he has achieved while he’s in God’s workshop, trying to make something, pervert what God has made, and put it into his own ideas, and make it up. Now, as I said about this city, as this great beautiful city here. If this city was just…It would be prettier than it was at the first place if, up-and-down the streets went the people of God, with their hands in the air, praising God for their home and everything. Wouldn’t Phoenix be a garden spot of the earth? [Congregation says, “Amen.”—Ed.] But, instead of that, like all other cities, it’s lying, stealing, cheating, gambling, smoking, drinking, carousing, adultery. And it’s become a stink before God. See? So, you see, what a man tries to achieve, he just makes a mess out of it. He cannot save himself. And he tries by education, he’s took that route, to see if he couldn’t educate people into a saving knowledge of Christ, or saving knowledge for himself, or to do something through his education. I was reading the other day in—in Life magazine. Where, they had…I believe many of you read the article. Where, they done everything now towards putting different elements together, or accumulations, until they can almost make life. And they said they would make it. They can’t do that. Life is creation. So only one is a Creator, and that is God. See? They’ll never be able to make life, but he’s trying to do that. Wonder what kind of a specie it would be, if he could make it, if it’d be after the intelligence of a man? So you see he can’t do that. It’s just not for him to do it. He’s failed with education. He’s failed with science. He knows that he come from somewhere, but he wants to find his way back. Adam really expressed that, the first man on earth. After finding that he had fallen from grace, he tried to take his own intelligence and make a way back to God without an atonement. He tried to go back to God without making an—an atonement, something to pay for his sins. After the penalty of God was death, he tried to go back without a death atonement. And men are still trying to do that, trying to make a religion without an atonement in it. Adam made himself a covering out of fig leaves, with no blood shed for this covering, and God refused it. And He has refused it then, and He always will refuse it. Because, “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.” He just can’t get back. Because, the penalty is death; and something has to die, to pay that penalty. So it can only be substitutionary, or we’re all in death if there wasn’t a substitute for us to hold on to. And man, in doing this, realized that, that he needs something to hold on to, something that he can put his hands on, something he can say, “This is it. I’ve got it. I know it’s it.” So, Adam, to hold on to something, made a fig leaf to cover his and his wife’s nakedness, but he found out that that what he had in his hand did not work. On down through the ages we could count men, if we only had time. Let’s take two or three of them, anyhow. Let’s take Nimrod. Nimrod thought the same thing. After the flood, he was conscious that there was a God Who would judge the wicked, for they had just come out of that flood. And he knew that it was sin that caused God to destroy the world. Therefore, knowing that sin again would make God do the same thing, he tried to achieve something, to make a tower. That, men could run up in heaven if it got bad here on earth, and live in heaven; and then come back down on earth, and sin, and go back up into heaven again. 62-0119 - An Ensign Rev. William Marrion Branham http://table.branham.org